‘If you give a beggar money, it ends up lining the pockets of drug dealers, and potentially killing the person through an overdose.

‘People who are begging are often doing so because they are caught up in a dangerous lifestyle, they are begging, injecting drugs, going back to begging.

‘They are dying very young. The best way to help them is not give them money.’

‘Most people beg to buy hard drugs’

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Thames Reach says that most people its outreach teams meet on the streets have Class A drug habits – and police figures back this up.

Thames Reach says: ‘Overwhelming evidence shows that people who beg on the streets of England do so in order to buy hard drugs, particularly crack cocaine and heroin, and super-strength alcoholic beers and ciders.

‘This evidence comes from a number of sources. Firstly, Thames Reach’s outreach teams including its London Street Rescue service who are out and about on the streets of the capital working with London’s homeless 365 days of the year.

They estimate that 80 per cent of people begging do so to support a drug habit.

‘Secondly, when the Metropolitan Police did some drug testing of people arrested for begging, the figures indicated that between 70 and 80 per cent tested positive for Class A drugs.’

Do homeless people really ‘need money to get into a hostel’?

Thames Reach says that the frequently used line, ‘I need £15 to get into a hostel,’ is simply fiction – used to acquire large sums of money late at night.

Homeless people will be offered accommodation without having to pay up front, the charity said.

MIke Nicholas said: ‘We run hostels, that’s not how they work. We get someone in off the streets, we will sort out the rent for the hostel.

‘The idea that you need money to ‘get into a hostel’, you don’t pay at point of entry.

‘Support workers will help individuals to claim benefits

Thames Reach says, ‘There are around 3,000 bed spaces of hostel accommodation in London, which can be accessed via the street outreach teams that work in the central London boroughs.

London Street Rescue, run by Thames Reach, is one of the main providers of outreach services across London.

‘Our teams not only help people to find accommodation but also get them into drug and alcohol treatment mental health programmes.’

Harsh reality of homelessness in the UK

The average life expectancy of a homeless person in the UK is a shockingly young 47 years old.

At least 7,581 people are believed to have slept rough in London in 2014/15, a 16 per cent rise on the previous year.

And on any given night in 2014, 2,744 people were sleeping rough in England.

This is more than double the figure in 2010, before the Coalition government introduced its austerity measures.